Forget the past and face the future! – Myles Munroe

We listened to a sermon by Dr. Myles Munroe. We were so blessed, we took some notes, and decided to share.

Enjoy.

What you know should not limit what you could know.

Memory immobilizes man. Many are trapped by what they have already done and makes them question what they could do. Don’t be preoccupied with what you have done that you do not plan to do what you could. Even the good things you do could prevent you from accomplishing greater things. The past is dangerous. One of the greatest decisions that a human can make is to actually forget. God gave you the capacity to forget. God gave you the ability to literally turn things off.

It is possible to not allow your memory to influence you. Don’t allow your memory to immobilize your life. You can cancel the emotional debt and the psychological ties you have with the past. It is impossible for you to succeed until the future becomes more important than your past. You must move past your past to enter your future.

God forgets your past. He takes your sin – your past life, past behavior, and includes that which was done through Adam.

Jesus took care of the sin problem before man sinned. “Jesus was slain before the earth was founded.” God made arrangement to deal with your past because he loves your future too much.

What you did is never more important than what you could do.

God’s dreams for you are so important that God made arrangement for your past so that your future could still be possible, even if you messed up in your past. That is, God planned my past before my future, so that my past will not interfere with my future. Jesus died for you while you were yet a sinner. So you are not a haphazard second thought of God. God hates to see you fail; he made arrangement never to see you fail. Anything that happens in your life that is not God’s best for your life, is a temporary detour. That is why I love the word, forget.

Forget whatever it is that is stopping you from moving ahead.

Philippians 3 was written by a serial killer – Saul. One of his zealous commitments was to kill as much as possible. His reputation was so horrible that even when he had a change in life, the people still didn’t trust him. One day, on his way to kill more people, God interferes with his plans and changes his life.

Whatever happens to you is your choice. God expects us to choose life. The quality of our choices decides the quality of our lives.

If you don’t like what you remember, create a new memory. You create a new memory by making a new decision to create a new past. If your good past outweighs the bad past, you’ll remember the good one.

Paul says, “but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Phil 3:13-14

You have to put a little pressure on life to move toward your future. Your future is waiting for you, but you have to press toward it.

There is a resistance. Once you begin to move away from your past, you realize that people and situations are not in your favor. The minute you start to do something with your life, is the time everyone you thought was your friend begins to turn against you. You have to put pressure to advance. Don’t wait for things to break for you. You have to break them. Don’t wait for opportunity to find you, create your own – press forward to the goal for which God has called you.

Take hold of that for which Christ took hold of you. Paul knew that Christ took of him so he could take hold of something. Paul knew he was created for a purpose.

Ephesians 2:10 – We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works.

You were born to complete an assignment. But before you could complete the work, something wrong happened – the fall. Now salvation means God fixing you up to do the very works you were created to do before the world began.

You were born to do something, not to go somewhere – heaven. You are bored because you are waiting to go to heaven!

You have to do something with your life! God needs to rupture our lazy thinking. He needs to make us sick of doing nothing.

What did Paul have to forget?

– He had to forget the memories of murders (of Stephen).

Moses wondered why God chose him for that mission. Many of us feel that way.

God doesn’t care what you have done if you are willing to do what he wants you to do.

Who cares if you had a divorce? If you had an abortion? It is a tragedy, then get off and live!

It is outside your tragedy that God does the greatest work. If you lose, it is because you decided not to win!

Be like Paul, forget the past!

To many of us, our past is a constant threat to the dreams in our future. Many spend time living in their past without spending any time in their future. Others allow their past to hold them past without going into their future.

How are we supposed to deal with our past? How do we let our past go forever?

The key to living your future is letting go of your past.

Isaiah 54:4 Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.

Fear not!
Most people fear that they will repeat their failures. Businessmen who fail at a certain project refuse to do it again. God wanted them to tell the people to fear not.

Your past failure is no guarantee that you will fail again.

You will fail. Every successful person in life fails at something. A person who understands life is not afraid of failure, because he knows that failure is a part of success.

Failure is a part of success!

Failure is a part of the components that make success happen.

See failure as an opportunity to begin again. You never really progress until you are under pressure. 99% of changes in the human life takes place because they had to change.

Pray: Lord, put me under pressure.

It is pressure that brings progress. Most of the changes you have made in life was because you had to do it.

Failure is actually the test of your resolve. If you don’t have your resolve tested, then your resolution will have no gravity. People who quit after their first failure, never wanted to succeed in the first place. You cannot stop a man who decides to win.

People who succeed in life are those who have decided to win. You have to have an agreement with life: You will live life. Life has everything in it, but you have to take it from life. Life doesn’t give you stuff, you have to go and get it.

Life is like Goliath. Calls you names like, lazy, timid, slow, and you have to prove life wrong. People who fail decided to fail. Nobody failed without their own decision. That is why God never accepted anybody in scripture as a failure.

Stop keeping alive that which is dead. You will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth.

Forgetting is an act of the will. Memories don’t go away, you send them away.

It is easy to forget when you are so busy creating new memories. Will to forget your past!

Your past is conquered when you can use it as a testimony. Until you can take what happened to you and use it as an illustration, you are not free from it!

In other words, when you tell about your past, they can’t use it against you. When you are free from your past, you can use it against the devil. People who deny their past are not free from it, they are imprisoned from it.

You will forget the past and the shame of your youth, and remember no more the reproach.

Isaiah 43:18 says, Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

There are people who have dwelled (inhabited, lived) in their past, and it has stopped them from living in their future.

Isaiah 43:25 – I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.

Why does God blot out your past for his sake?
Because he has something for you to do! And he doesn’t want what you did to get in the way of what he wants you to do. God wants your future more than your past. God blots out your sins because he wants to see your righteousness; he forgets your failure because he wants to see your success. He is more interested in what you are born to do more than what you have done. God is such a good God, because he doesn’t hold our past against our future.

Aren’t you glad for that?

Perhaps you have some dreams you haven’t accomplished. Reasons may be because you are afraid or ashamed, but can you take God’s command?

Heb 8:12 says, For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more
Heb 10:17 – Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”
Eph 2:1-7

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)

6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.